Jam Sessions: Workshops That Work

I designed these highly interactive Jam Sessions as an alternative to the dry “training” sessions many companies (mistakenly) think will help their comms teams be better and work better. These lively gatherings are designed to help you meet the needs of your real, hard-working employees, as well as your own real, hard-working career goals.

These Jam Sessions are handcrafted with your jam in mind: easy to understand, easy to engage with and easy to incorporate into your daily workflow.

Together or separately, Jam Sessions help jumpstart change in you, your team, your leaders, and your company.

Jam Session #1: Ways of Working

This session is all about defining and refining how you work together as a team, how your function operates, and how you interact with your clients and partners. We’ll explore all that goes into the processes, procedures, and approaches that ensure a smooth operation. Topics include:

  • Receiving and processing work requests

  • Project management, stakeholder management/alignment, and client interactions

  • Scheduling, resourcing, and budgeting

  • Why vs. when

  • Tools/CMS/platforms used to create the magic

  • Saying no more often (or at least, yes...but)

  • Numbers and data vs. words and pictures

  • The difference between important and urgent

  • What If > What Is

Jam Session #2: Roles and Career Pathing

This session is all about exploring the craft of internal comms, HR comms, EX and change management and the role they play in any modern corporate setting. We’ll look at channel strategies, content creation, digital employee experience, tech platforms, DE&I, trends, and pitfalls. Then we’ll show how knowing more about all of this will help you better define your career path. Topics include:

  • What employees want from IC and their workplace experience

  • Push vs. pull channels

  • Aligning content with employee expectations

  • The power of the storytelling arc

  • Taking the “corporate” out of Corporate Communications

  • The basics of measurement (yuck! math, right?!)

  • Engagement is a siren song

  • You too can learn to speak HR

  • Reading a balance sheet can be fun

  • OpEx, CapEx, ROI, and other financial slang

This session is all about taking your new thinking to a new level. Whether you want to be a manager, director, VP, CCO, CHRO, or the CEO, understanding more about how to lead others while you lead yourself is paramount to a long and successful career. Topics include:

  • Everyone’s favorite radio station: WIIFM

  • Consulting vs. selling

  • Anticipating vs. reacting

  • Staying curious

  • Exercising power by giving it all away

  • Leading when you aren’t in charge

  • “Executive presence”

  • Emotional intelligence and empathy

  • Encouraging the good in others

  • Identifying emerging talent

  • Seeing over the horizon 

Jam Session #3: Upskilling and Future Proofing

Jam Session #4: Creativity for Internal Comms

Your friends in Marketing shouldn’t have all the fun. Your employees deserve creative comms just as much as your customers do. So give it to them! Creativity for Internal Comms is designed to help IC pros at all levels strengthen their creativity so they can generate new ideas, ignite innovation, and solve problems.

  • Discover what it takes to be creative (Hint: it’s not about arts and crafts or just being cute and clever)

  • Find and ignite your own creativity through hands-on experiences

  • Hardwire creative confidence so you can use your creativity to generate ideas and solve problems every day

  • Harness the creative talents you already have and think more creatively every day, not just about comms but about moving your company forward

Jam Session #5: You Call That Storytelling? Oh, No No No No

Like it or not, your content is competing with every other choice your employees have. Netflix? Yep. TikTok? Yep. Memes? Yep. That silly origin story on the back of the potato chip bag? Again, yep.

That content shows up like boom-chicka-boom-boom while yours is all blah blah corporate fluff blah blah exec bs blah blah what is AP Style anyway yawn snooze blah.

Enough of that noise. It’s time to take both the “corporate” and the “communications” out of corporate communications. Until the robots take over, your company is still full of humans. And they all speak like humans. And that’s how they want you to speak, as well, please and thank you.

The good news is, you and your team are also humans! So act like it. Here’s how:

  • The latest trends in communications, and whether or not you should try them out at your place

  • The Smart Brevity approach to getting your point across

  • How to make each content opportunity a storytelling moment

  • What the heck even is “storytelling” at work

  • How to make all your comms — email, videos, Town Halls, intranet, apps, execs (yes, even these folks!) and whatever else you’re doing — read and sound like the way your employees actually talk and think

  • Outputs vs. outcomes and how to prove your content is driving the business, not just clicks, likes and shares

  • The easy peasy writing planning template

These Jam Sessions are designed as a series to give you a much needed boost of confidence and a shot of courage to tackle your biggest challenges. Don’t have the time or the budget for all five at once? No problem! You can easily mix and match different Jam Sessions to fit your needs, even if that need is just one.

Jam Sessions are $7500 each, with a price break if you want to do more than one. Like any good jam session, they last anywhere from two-to-four hours. You can bring as many participants as you’d like. While jamming together in person is always way better, these can also be delivered online. For in person sessions, you’ll just need to cover my travel costs, a ham sandwich and a beer.

What’s that you say?!? You have your own Jam Session in mind? Well, who am I to harsh your vibe? Your jam is my jam. Let’s put something together that makes sense for you and your team!